There are known and more or less utilized a great number and variety of combined chair, seat or bench/table or desk constructions, some of which are to some greater or lesser extent of a collapsible nature.
By way of exemplification of this, reference may be had to U.S. Pat. Nos. 10,908 to Bass; 56,540 to Ehlman; 1,299,881 to Walter; 1,401,083 to Jurkovich; 1,218,322 to Sandell; 2,645,273 to Culbertson et al.; 2,842,185 to Fortine; 2,900,009 to Haynes; 2,931,425 to Rasco et al.; 3,361,470 to Gustin et al.; Des. 178,611 to Mickelson; Des. 181,727 to Haynes, Sr.; and Des. 182,474 to Mielke.
Several serious deficiencies and inadequacies are quite evidently inherent in the heretofore revealed and available articles and items of furniture of the indicated type and style. To particularize the more salient of these, the bulk of the more troublesome drawbacks include such things as the assemblies being: awkward with required incorporation of cumbersome and unnecessary features and parts; top-heavy, poorly-centered and unsafe from a reliably stable balance point of view; and/or not capable of very efficient and compact folding or breaking down for minimized conformation to facilitate maximized nestability for stacking and space-saving storage capability.
More specifically:
The Bass contrivance is too large and of obviously literally "huge" proportional design to be of realistic moment for modern concepts and taste acceptabilities. In addition, it is plainly not stackable. To avoid tumbling over when it is folded out, it has to be secured to a ground platform, as shown and taught in the disclosure of the patent.
The Ehlman structure must have two separately finished surfaces, distinct for back and front in the table portion, to be operable. It, too, is not of a stackable nature.
In the Walter device, the conversion results in the original seat portion becoming the table top. This unavoidably results in a miniature and inherently uncomfortable structure upon conversion.
The Jurkovich arrangement requires a backwards movement and lifting of the seat back attachment of the unit during conversion which then, for best results, must be placed in a double back-to-back relationship to provide any sort of usable bench/table result. Further, this opened-out form of arrangement is plainly one of a very "crowded" nature causing much in-and-out difficulty for personal movement in use, especially insofar as concerns user's leg movements and manipulations.
Sandell's unit, when made into combination form, gives a very bad load center characteristic, displaying in this most of the same awkward in-and-out features of Jurkovich. Furniture devised according to the Sandell concept could not be employed as a chair in a closely adjacent back-against-wall relationship since it would be unavoidably unfoldable when so stationed due to wall interference unless the entire unit were physically moved out to a spacing sufficiently far from the wall to allow for unfolding of the unit.
The Culbertson et al. appliance results in a seriously off-center, top-heavy piece when converted which is plainly greatly susceptible to being easily toppled when overloaded as a table or awkwardly leaned upon by the user sitting in the unit. This appliance is merely movable, and not at all compactable or stackable.
Fortine's relatively inflexible design requires tedious disassembly for conversion in order to reconstruct the pieces so that the underside seat can be made into a table top.
The Haynes apparatus, when converted, gives a dangerously top-heavy, off-center furniture piece that is easily upset with too great a table load. The same undesirable feature is readily evident in the Design Patents to Mickelson, Haynes, Sr. and Mielke; the same also being inherent as above noted in Sandell and Culbertson et al. and intrinsically considerably badly off-center and dangerous because of the too-easily-tippable characteristic to users, particularly active and sometimes not-cautious-or-prudent-in-movement children.
The Rasco et al. furniture is severely limited in its utility by the glaring fact that it can be made, but only in one way or the other, in the form of either a bench or a table but not both and not readily (without literally total disassembly) convertible back and forth. It is not a neat nor compact structure in either form; and requires movement of two surfaces in order to achieve form changement.
The Gustin et al. article is quite awkward and treacherous. It has subtending parts that could jab into the lower torso of one sitting therein. It also does not permit disposition of its legs so as to allow collapse on folding; and further (unless grossly uncomfortable and not-practically-supporting short seat backs are employed) yields a very awkward bench/table structure in which the table top necessarily and in ungainly, cramping style extends over the bench portion.
It would obviously be desirable to have a truly attractive and vastly improved, convenient, easily-operable and readily compactable, stackable and storeable convertible and collapsible bench/table combination item of furniture that would avoid and not be subject to the shortcomings, design inadequacies and drawbacks and other insufficiencies and dissatisfactory details and features of prior and hitherto revealed and practiced prior art.